


The Autumn Garden

by anyastasia



Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Autumn, Sibling Bonding, fall - Freeform, for lua fall swap!, i will die on this sibling hill, legend and fable are siblings, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:06:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27791233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anyastasia/pseuds/anyastasia
Summary: Legend drops into his Hyrule just in time to see the trees turn red and yellow! Hyrule tags along to see the beauty of the castle’s autumn garden.for the lovely julia! ❤️
Relationships: Fable & Legend (Linked Universe), Hyrule & Legend (Linked Universe)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	The Autumn Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UbiquitousSpontaneities](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UbiquitousSpontaneities/gifts).



In the sprawling courtyards of Hyrule Castle, there was an autumn garden. Beautiful trees, rows of maples, river birches, hickories, sweetgums - any tree or shrub or bush that would undergo a magnificent transformation as the seasons changed were assembled in a courtyard. For a single week of the year, the garden would be alive with warmth and color. Anywhere you looked, it was red, yellow, orange, gold - like one was dancing in a furnace as they stepped inside.

The grass became a fiery carpet as the leaves fell, and created another activity other than observing the breathtaking trees. The children of the castle would beg the groundkeepers to sweep the leaves into massive piles so they could climb on top of benches and rocks to hurl themselves into the leaves. They were like children playing in snow for the first time, catching a handful of leaves and throwing them into the air to shriek with laughter as they floated down. For a week, as the seasons changed, the autumn garden was alive with the laughter of children, until all the leaves fell and the children moved on. 

The autumn gardens were a favorite of the queen herself - in fact, after she took a liking to reading her books in the courtyard or simply sitting alone, enjoying the cool breeze on her face, children were forbidden from playing with their leaf piles. Only two children were permitted to play in the autumn gardens while the queen was there: the prince and the princess.

As the heirs to the throne of Hyrule, they were expected to act like model children. Zelda was kind, studious, and could tell anyone about the history of Hyrule, backwards and forwards. She was skilled with her powers as princess, and could best even the most powerful sorcerer in a battle of spells and magic. Her brother, Link, was a skilled swordsman from a young age, and was destined to pull the Master Sword once he became of age. As prince and the hero of Hyrule, most of his days were full of training and advice from historians on how best to use his Triforce power to his advantage.

Even though they were children, they didn’t get a lot of downtime to play and run amok across the castle like the rest of the palace children. The only place they could normally escape to were there storybooks as their nannies and maids read to them until they would fall asleep.

But there was always one time a year they especially looked forward to - the week when the autumn gardens bloomed.

As royal children training day and night, they barely got to see any of their mother. The queen was a busy woman herself, taking care of the castle and aiding her husband the king in his affairs. However, whenever the leaves changed and the autumn gardens became awash with red leaves, she would summon her children and watch them play in the leaves.

Link and Zelda loved this time of year. They would don their chilly-weather clothes and burst out of their classes as soon as they received the summons from their mother, hurrying to pull on their coats and thin gloves. They would trip over each other, trying to beat the other there.

The queen was always waiting there when they arrived. A motherly smile on her face, holding a book or knitting or something to keep her hands busy. Link and Zelda would stand at rapt attention as the queen fixed their scarves and buttoned up their jackets, before she gave the kind order to go play.

One thing was for sure - Link and Zelda were a menace for the poor leaves. They would wrestle with each other, the Triforces on their hands glowing as their hands brushed. Zelda would yowl as Link pulled her hair, and stomp on his face in retaliation. But they were both tough, trained at the same level by the best swordsmen the king could find. They never played too rough - they didn’t want to make their mother worry about them. By the end of their wrestling match, Zelda would have so many sticks and leaves tangled in her blonde curls that it would make her handmaidens faint, and Link’s cheeks would be rosy from panting in the cold air, with hands scraped up from tussling in the fallen leaves.

Then, they would scoop up the leaves and make a huge pile, as big as they could manage. Zelda was always careful to pick out the acorns and sticks from the pile, trying to make the softest landing possible. After they had assembled their activity, they clambered up onto a nearby rock and flung themselves into the pile, hands intertwined, shrieking and laughing as they went down. Rolling around in the pile only made more leaf litter and grass get stuck to them, but they didn’t care. They would clamber out, reassemble the pile, and jump again.

One year, Link was brave enough to climb one of the trees. It was a hickory, nearly as tall as the walls around them, and the leaves were as yellow as Zelda’s hair. He told Zelda (bossily) to make the biggest leaf pile she could, whispering in case their mother overheard their master plan.  _ I’m gonna jump down into the pile, _ he whispered to his sister.  _ So make it a big one! _

Zelda hated being bossed around. Why was she the one who had to make the pile? She wanted to climb the tree and jump into the pile too, but then who would make it? So she devised her own plan: as Link was busy climbing the tree, she went over and found all of the acorns and sticks she had been picking out of the previous piles. Such as devilish child was she, as she threw in all of the offending nuts and branches as she constructed a large pile.

Link, on the other hand, couldn’t be more thrilled. He could just imagine it: when he landed, the leaves would fly up and go everywhere! And his mother would smile and say,  _ you’re such a silly boy, Link. You looked as if you were flying! _

Halfway up the trunk, Link dug his nails into the bark and risked a look down. Oh. It was  _ much _ further down than he had originally anticipated. Zelda looked like an ant, scurrying around and shoveling leaves into the pile. He gulped. But he couldn’t chicken out now - Zelda would tease him about it to no end if he did.

He managed to turn himself out, balancing on a branch and holding onto the trunk behind him for dear life. Yes, this was not a good idea. But he was big and brave, and he was the hero of Hyrule. A leaf pile couldn’t hurt him!

“I’m gonna jump!” He yelled down. Zelda looked up at him with wide eyes.

“Link!” His mother’s voice rang out across the courtyard. “Don’t you take one more step off of that tree, young man!”

The tone of his mother’s voice made him shudder, but there was no turning back now. He took a deep breath, and slowly released the trunk so that he was balancing precariously on the branch.

“ _ Link! _ ” His mother shouted again. Zelda was backing up, never taking her eyes off of him as she left room for him to jump.

With a mighty battle cry, Link pushed himself off of the tree and plummeted towards the leaf pile.

_ OW. _

Link landed feet first, which did  _ not _ sit right with his poor ankles. He put his arms out to try and break his fall, and that wasn’t very good for his wrists either. His face was next to meet the leaf pile, and he snapped his eyes shut, but acorns and sticks and the pokey end of leaves scraped against his skin. A horrible pain shot up his leg, and he cried out, his face still buried in the leaves.

He had hit more ground than leaves. He hadn’t really anticipated that the weight of his body would move the leaves out of the way, leaving him nearly landing on the grass with no cushioning. He should have thought that through.

“Link!” Zelda cried out as her brother landed hard. She hurried over to her fallen brother, grabbing him by the arms and rolling him over. She took into account how his ankle was twisted awkwardly in a way that probably shouldn’t be possible. Twisted or broken, one of the two, for sure.

“Link, you disobedient child!” The queen scolded him, marching over with a firey expression that matched the leaves around them. “What did I say? Look at you! You’re hurt!”

Link stared up at his mother with wide eyes. His face and his hands were scraped up and bloody from the tree trunk and the nasty obstacles Zelda had put in the leaf pile. His blue eyes filled with tears, and he sniffled, the pain in his ankle making it hard to think.

“I’m sorry,” he babbled, his injured hands shaking as he reached up to brush his tears away. “I-I wanted to fly. I wanted to fly into the leaf pile.”

His mother’s face turned soft, and she reached out, gently taking his hands away from his face and cupping his cheeks in her own. 

“My little hero,” she said, smiling. “You don’t need to fly yet. You will, when you’re the hero. When you start your adventure.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Every hero learns to fly.”

-

“It was our mother’s favorite place,” Zelda sighed, glancing sideways at her brother and his companion - Hyrule, if she remembered their names right. The cute, freckle-faced brunette. He seemed friendly enough. And Link was fond of him.

Link - he wanted her to call him  _ Legend, _ to avoid confusion, but there was no way she was feeding into his ego by calling him that - grinned at her. “Remember that year when I jumped off the hickory and broke my ankle?”

Zelda returned his toothy grin. “How could I forget? You whined like a puppy for about a month afterwards.”

Link scoffed and folded his hands behind his head. “Only because I was upset you were getting farther ahead of me in lessons while I had a  _ painful recovery. _ ”

Barking a laugh, Zelda shoved him lightly. “Painful recovery my ass.”

Link raised an eyebrow. “Oh, that isn’t a very princess-like word to use-”

“I’m going to kill you,” Zelda said cheerfully as she skipped ahead. “Any day now. You’ve been warned.”

It was sheer luck that Link and his companions ended up here during the week the autumn garden bloomed. Zelda knew that Link still loved the autumn garden - she did too, of course - but it hadn’t been the same ever since their mother passed away and the autumn garden was empty. Children overtook the garden once again, building their piles and jumping in until they had to rebuild it again. But nothing they did would ever beat Link’s leap from the hickory.

Hyrule’s green eyes widened as they entered, his mouth falling open. Zelda always forgot how vibrant the colors were - dazzling oranges of the maples, the neon yellows of the hickories. It was like stepping into another world.

“Oh, wow,” Hyrule whispered. “I’ve never seen leaves with these colors before!”

Zelda blinked at him. “Really? Do the leaves not change where you’re from?”

Hyrule shook his head, squatting down to pick up a handful of brightly colored leaves. “Not really. My Hyrule is mostly wasteland now - not that many trees. And most of them are dead or don’t have leaves anyway.”

Zelda and Link shared a look, but Link just glanced away. A sure sign that he’d talk to her about that later.

“This is where Mother used to sit,” Link said instead, scampering over to the bench by the path and sitting down. “She’d read or knit. And make sure we stayed out of trouble and didn’t kill each other.”

“Link took a swan dive off of a hickory one year,” Zelda said, marching over and sitting much too close to Link for his comfort zone. “He told me, ‘Make the biggest pile you can! I’m gonna jump in it!’” She gave her brother a knowing look. “You can guess how well that went.”

Link wrinkled his nose. “We were seven.”

Zelda grinned. “If I’m not mistaken, that was the year you started saying that you were old enough to pull the Master Sword.”

Link scoffed and scooped up a handful of leaves, rubbing it in his sister’s hair. She shrieked in surprise and jumped up, grabbing him and throwing him into the leaves, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

“No fair!” Link complained. “I’m sore from walking for the past few months.”

Zelda blew a raspberry at him. “Boo hoo. Go sit in a bath or something.”

Rolling his eyes, Link glanced over at Hyrule. He was a bit surprised to find him playing around in the leaves like a child, laughing as he threw the leaves high above his head and had a sort of childlike wonder in his eyes as he watched them spiral down. A few smaller leaves settled in his hair, like fallen pieces of sunlight.

He saw Link looking at him, and grinned. “Come on! It’s fun!” As if to prove his point, he threw himself down on the ground and began to make a snow angel out of the leaves, laughing as he did.

Link smiled and pushed himself off of the bench, running over and picking up a big handful of leaves as he did. Hyrule sat up as he came over, and Link bowled him over, laughing as they tussled on the soft leaves and chucked handfuls of leaves at each other. Hyrule must have picked up an acorn in one of his piles, because Link felt a nut hit him above the eyebrow, and he sat back, rubbing the aching spot.

“Zelda used to put acorns in leaf piles she knew I would jump in,” he accused, pointing at her. She pouted and put her hands on her hips.

“Only because you were teasing me so much,” she shot back. “Hyrule, come on, let’s make a big pile and fill it with acorns.”

“I’m game!” Hyrule said cheerfully, jumping to his feet. Link grabbed him by the shins and yanked his legs out from under him, causing him to fall back with a shout of surprise.

Zelda threw her head back and laughed, watching her brother and Hyrule wrestle playfully on the leaves like they did as children. She crossed her arms as she watched them, not being able to help the smile that spread across her face.   
  


“Maybe you should try to climb that hickory again,” she taunted. “Me and Hyrule’ll make a leaf pile.”

Link spit a leaf out of his mouth as he sat up. “Not a chance,” he said. “I’m too valuable to get another broken ankle.”

Zelda laughed. “Sure. You boys have fun - I’m going back inside to  _ actually attend to our guests and make sure they’re alright, Link. _ ”

“Yeah, yeah!” Link shouted back as she walked out, rubbing leaves into Hyrule’s hair and making him shriek with laughter. She left them under the hickory, where years ago a queen and a princess had watched the young hero try to fly.


End file.
